Once upon a time I was very trendy, very efficient, and supposedly saving time, which is why I disliked voice messages and joined this imaginary sect. Its main and core principle was to hate everyone who sent voice messages, as if they were deliberately wasting other people’s time and as if you needed some special environment just to listen to them.

Telegram even added an option to forbid sending them. And did it for people with a paid subscription. Lol.

Lately, I’ve completely reconsidered my attitude toward voice messages and, to be honest, I no longer understand why I disliked them so much. They are a wonderful form of asynchronous communication, second only to video messages. And I love them both as a sender and as a recipient.

If you need to tell a story or explain something substantial, they save a lot of time compared to typing. And in the process of speaking through an idea / problem / story, you suddenly formulate it better. Yes, I don’t always record them on the first try, and sometimes I don’t even send them after saying everything out loud. For some reason, with text this takes more time.

But the best thing about them is that they’re human. They contain emotions, pauses, awkward moments, laughter; sarcasm and various other nuances are easier to hear. It’s easier to understand a person through them simply because they carry additional information and create context.

And another great thing is that now there’s 2x–3x playback speed everywhere and automatic transcription to text.

This expressiveness and humanity are hard to achieve in text, while in a simple voice message you get it for free. There’s only one problem with them, just like with regular messages: they should be forbidden if they contain only one or two words.